


Reminisce

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Mutantstuck [19]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Family Bonding, Gen, davepeta's kind of a dick but i love them, i think i'm gonna have to retire my kindle for writing on RIP, marvelstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 14:28:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19871149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: Ambrose spends some therapist-mandated time with all three of his kids.





	Reminisce

Therapy's kinda bad all the time, but the homework ain't bad. Spending time with Dave is probably always gonna feel like a gift, you think, thanks to the years without him.

Not that you didn't get anything good out of those years. Sure, you can count the good things on the fingers of one hand, but that don't fuckin' invalidate them—Davesprite and Davepeta, they're hella important, and so's the whole self- knowledge thing.

You don't really want to think about who you'd be if you never realized you were a mutant. Hell, it's not even speculation at this point, since you have the evidence to show what would have—

Davepeta's tail wraps around your neck for a second and Davesprite's feathers rustle beside you. Dave, who'd gone quiet for the last couple minutes as he focused on the movie playing on Hal's laptop, rolls onto his back to blink up at you from where he's using your lap as a pillow. 

Aw, fuck, from the look on his face he _totally_ knows. Maybe you can play dumb anyway. 

"Shitty thoughts?" your kid asks, and nope, no playing dumb, you know that won't work even before Davepeta slides off the back of the couch to perch on the arm instead, watching you like a hawk. 

Own up to it. "Eh. Could be shittier, but yeah." 

"Talk to us, bro." Davesprite almost coos the words, his voice gone soft and sweet just from how quietly he makes the request. (You feel a little spark of familiar happiness at being called _bro_ again...and at the fact that Dave doesn't even flinch hearing it. You're getting somewhere.) 

You still duck as Davesprite spreads a wing to fold around you. Dave closes his eyes and huffs out a laugh as the tips of those orange feathers tickle across his face. "Yeah, you gotta talk now, Ambrose. I spent half this fuckin' movie complaining about it—" 

"Yeah, that's why Karkitty says you have a pitch crush on Nic Cage!"

"—shut _up_ , Davepeta, I don't have a goddamn alien crush on that fucker, he just looks like a douche—" 

"You so totally do, its furreaking cute as shit—" 

Dave growls and goes to sit up, like he's gonna take a bite out of them. Before he gets even halfway up, Davesprite rolls those creamsicle eyes and plants one taloned hand flat on Dave's chest, snapping the wing that's not folded around you out to smack Davepeta with a faceful of feathers that neatly knocks them off their not-so-stable seat. 

They hit the floor (well, the pile of pillows you've learned to place on the floor during this kinda session) with a thump and a yowl, but there's no bruises in evidence when they bounce back up to settle on the back of the couch again. You reach up and back just to check; Davepeta rolls their head against your hand, already crooning one of their weirdly avian purrs deep in their chest. 

Dave's laughing again, low and steady. When you look down at him he stops, but he doesn't take his eyes off your face.   
"What?" you ask him. He shrugs. "C'mon, kiddo. 'm I funny?" 

"Well, _duh_." He mirrors Davesprite from a couple seconds ago; the way the two of them roll their eyes is damn near identical. "Were you this fuckin' anxious when it was me?" 

"I—" Ah, god. Dave as a baby, those first couple weeks as you struggled to come to terms with the enormity of what you'd taken on. "Pretty much, yeah." 

"...hm." Dave blinks a couple times, like he's thinking it over. Then, "Tell me about it." 

"Huh. 'bout what?" 

"When you got me." 

"Jesus fuck, you make it sound like I went 'n picked you out of the goddamn animal shelter or some shit..."

"Oh, you mean you _didn't_?" 

"These two, maybe—" You punctuate with a rougher scratch behind Davepeta's ears, a gentle nudge applied to Davesprite's skinny torso, drawing mock-complaints from both of them— "—but nah, you were custom made. Your mom, she—we had an agreement. She handed you over for the first time 'bout ten minutes after the doctors let her hold you, gave up custody for good when you were two months old." 

Fuck. He's gonna ask about her. 

" _You_ had a two-month-old." 

Or not. Apparently your levels of responsibility are more interesting than the other half of his DNA. (Thank fuck.) "Hey, back then I was in practice for that shit. Dirky was like one and a half, I still remembered babies, okay?" 

Another slow, red-eyed blink. "Was I like him?" 

"No." Kinda hard to get that one out around the sudden lump in your throat, but you can't help it—it's a memory, of a baby, _your_ baby in your arms. "Like—wow, fuckin' shit, everything we've covered and _this_ is what I tear up over?" 

Davepeta _mrrows_ as you take your hand away from their head to rub at your eyes. Davesprite murmurs something you can't really hear, and they quiet down again until you reach back to keep up with your head-scritching. 

"You were littler'n Dirk." ( _Tiny._ Fuckin' tiny.) "Didn't have any hair—the only bald Strider I've ever seen, swear to god. Dirk's eyes—they were brown when he was born, we couldn't fuckin' figure out where he got _that_ , 'n then they got lighter before his first birthday, went oranger than mine, and wasn't that even more of a what the fuck moment—but yours were red from the start." 

_Shit_ , there's the tears again. Why did you quit wearing shades indoors, exactly? Closing your eyes ain't near as effective in hiding that shit, but you don't dare open them again. Not even when Dave makes a small noise and the weight of his head shifts off your legs—somehow, you don't really wanna watch him nope out of another interaction with you. It's too hard to keep yourself from following, if you see it. 

But nah, he's not on his way out. An arm settles around your shoulders, sliding between your back and Davesprite's wing, and holy shit your the one on the receiving end of the comfort this time. Shit's fuckin' unprecedented. 

"God, you fuckin' love me," Dave mumbles, and yes you catch the present tense. It's a tiny fucking distinction but it means more than a terabyte of info on the web of emotions between you and your family. "Love you too, Ambrose." 

Your voice is ready to be a complete fucking traitor, so you answer by wrapping the arm that's not resting in Davepeta's curly hair around Dave's shoulder. You're pretty sure he'll know what that one means.


End file.
